


When I Could Finally Breathe

by afewreelthoughts



Series: My Words Will Be Your Light [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Elia Martell Lives, F/F, Lyanna Stark Lives, not very nice to Rhaegar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 09:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17979005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: Elia flees from King's Landing to the Tower of Joy, where she meets the woman who Rhaegar left everything behind for.





	When I Could Finally Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> ASOIAF Rare Pair Week, Day 7: Free Day
> 
> titled lifted from "Clean" by Taylor Swift
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

Elia held the squirming child in her arms and smiled. There was nothing happy about this situation, but she could not help it: even after everything, Rhaegar would not have his Visenya.

The babe’s mother shifted on her bed, her eyes still closed. Elia did not want to look at her if she did not have to. Rhaegar, for all his flaws, might have been able to protect them, were he still alive. Without the Targaryens, great and terrible as they might have been, Elia had no idea what might befall any of them now.

“Is she going to wake up, mama?” Rhaenys looked up at the young girl lying on the room’s single bed.

The room still held fast to the scents of childbirth: sweat and blood, and Elia wanted to send Rhaenys and Aegon somewhere that did not smell like death, even if it was just a different room in this tower, but she panicked whenever they were not in sight.

“Let her be,” Elia said and watched her daughter with kind, but stern eyes, until Rhaenys retreated to the pile of cushions in the corner where her brother was seated.

The babe continued fussing and his mother slowly opened her eyes, wide, unfocused, and grey as the North. Recognition dawned on her as she looked at Elia and her child.

Her lips moved slowly.  “Your Majesty.” She struggled to sit up.

“Don’t,” Elia said. “You’ve just given birth. It’s natural to be tired. Having Aegon nearly killed me, so I know.”

The girl lay back down among the bedcovers.

Elia should not be jealous. It should not hurt to look at this northern girl. She knew none of this was her fault, and yet one thought filled her mind: _She’s more beautiful that me._

The babe in Elia’s arms began to cry.

"I think he wants his mother,” Elia said.

The girl opened her arms and held him close. Her hair stuck to her forehead and neck with sweat, and she blinked slowly. "I don’t know what to do."

“Rock him back and forth. If that doesn’t work, he might be hungry.”

After a moment of rocking, the child went quiet again. Elia ached with jealousy. Aegon had cried for months after he was born, and nothing, not food, nor sleep, nor love had calmed him.

"He would have discarded you, you know, once you gave him what he wanted,” Elia said.

“I know.”

She looked up, and her loveliness made Elia ache.

“I’m sorry for all the distress that I’ve caused you.”

Elia looked down at her shoes, the thin slippers she had worn when she’d fled the capitol. They were ruined now. “You’ve caused nothing.”

“I had to run from him, you must understand.”

“No. That part I don’t understand.”

Robert Baratheon was young, handsome, and full of violence, like most men were. Elia could understand Lyanna hating him, but she could not understand running from him.

 _I suppose not everyone sees Rhaegar the same,_  she thought,  _they see the silver and gold, but not the cruelty underneath._

“He said you didn’t care,” Lyanna said. “That the Targaryens used to take multiple wives, and that you understood how much he loved me - ”

“Please stop," Elia said. She missed him. She hated herself for it. He had been terrible and selfish, but he had also been hers and hers alone. The knowledge that he was gone was freedom and pain all at once.

“What will you do?” Lyanna asked. 

“I’ll stay here in Dorne with the children.” She looked back to where Aegon was pulling at Rhaenys’s hair. “With the family I still trust. And you?”

“I suppose I’ll marry Robert and probably... be queen.”

"You’ll need advice,” Elia heard herself saying. “It’s not as easy as they say.”

“No one says it’s easy.”

“Exactly.”

“I would love it if you’d tell me what I should do. I know nothing about being a wife, a mother, a queen, and you...” Lyanna Stark’s eyes lit up.

Elia smoothed her hair from her brow. “And I... what?”

“You do it all so well.”

Elia sighed. "Your brother and your betrothed are coming. You will be safe.”

“And you?”

“Yes?”

“Will you be safe?”

Elia smiled. “I’m sure we will. We only fled the city to escape murder, I’m sure my children will be safe here.”

“I will make sure you are,” Lyanna Stark said, and Elia wanted to believe her. “They love me, they will listen.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’ll make them.” Her grey eyes were hard as iron. “I’ll make them listen.”

Elia saw, in that ferocious moment, just what Rhaegar had fallen in love with.

"I don't know if I should believe you." 

Lyanna took her hand. "Try, please." 

At the touch of her hand, Elia's heart beat quickly. She could not say why. The next breath she took felt easier than the last, and she knew they were all headed somewhere new, wherever it might be. She could afford a moment or two of hope.

"I believe you," she said.

 

 


End file.
